Openbook wants to teach Facebook users importance of privacy

A new website is aiming to teach social networkers about privacy by allowing web users to search for embarrassing Facebook status updates that can be viewed by anyone.

New website allows web users to search for embarrassing posts

By
Carrie-Ann Skinner
| 17 May 2010

A new website is aiming to teach social networkers about privacy by allowing web users to search for embarrassing Facebook status updates that can be viewed by anyone.

Visitors to Openbook can search for terms such as 'playing hooky' or 'cheated a test'.

They will be presented with a list of Facebook users that have posted the term on their page and made their profile viewable by anyone.

According to Openbook founder Will Moffat, the site "draws attention to the to the information Facebook makes public about its users via its search API".

"Our goal is to get Facebook to restore the privacy of this information, so that this website and others like it no longer work."

Facebook told The Register, Openbook uses the search feature of the Graph API and the same search could be conducted on the sites itself.

"Only posts (status updates, notes) which are Everyone and Page names are available unless you authenticate with an app (e.g. the TweetDeck app is a desktop client you can use to search over your own status updates)," Facebook added.

Last week, Facebook's privacy changes came under fire from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party.

The party called recent changes to the social network's privacy settings "unacceptable".